By: Gilbert Pilayre
Ibrahim – Am I my brother’s keeper? (Genesis 4:9)
Michael Bedard’s Brother’s Keeper (1997)
The evening was a bit chilly and icy. Floki was leading me for his evening walk. This has been quite an issue between us. He seems to be the one taking me for a stroll while I follow him. Dogs are a bit silly. They piss on everything that stands in their way but can’t decide where to dump their poop. He keeps on smelling the ground like sniffing where he last dumped it. Then I heard somebody saying “hallo!”. It was already dusky. From the shadows appeared a man with curly hair and a smile that reminded me of a friend long time ago. But this one is a stranger. He said in German: Entschuldigung, ich suche diese Adresse. Können Sie mir bitte helfen? (Excuse me, I’m looking for this address, can you please help me? I looked at the paper he was holding. It was a recommendation for a place to sleep for the night. I then realized the man is homeless and was looking for a place out from the freezing cold. I answered: We’re on the right street but I don’t know where that place is. Anyway, I’ll help you find that address. Then we found the house number. The doorbell was just in front of us. I rang it. Somebody yelled from inside in response. Perhaps, the other person was not expecting visitors that evening. I volunteered to ask. His answer was a quick “Nein!” (No!) and followed by a dismissive wave of the hand shoving us away. The movement of his arms and hand reminded me of innkeepers who shoved Mary and Joseph as they were seeking a place to stay that fateful Christmas night as Mary was already bursting at the seams. It was a cruel act of saying in a bellowing voice:” I AM NOT MY BROTHER’S KEEPER!” So, we turned to an adjacent corner hoping we could find the address. There was this lady who was out in the snow, I asked her right away if she knew of an address where homeless people can spend the night. “Ja, ich habe davon gehört! Sie müssen diese Brücke am Ende der Straße überqueren. “Ich glaube, die Leute kennen sie, also können Sie dort nachfragen.” (Yes, I heard of it. You must cross the bridge at the end of the street. Many people know it, so you can somehow ask from there. We thanked her and proceeded. But my dog started to whine. He wants to go home after a time being exposed to the elements. The snow was falling already. I said to the stranger, “I guess I need to turn around back home now,” I gave my hand and introduced my name. In turn, he said his name is Ibrahim and that he is from Libya. It was not my intention to make a discussion with him any longer, but I cannot help knowing that Libya’s former President was killed by the US for threatening its interests.
Muammar Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa. However, by the time he was assassinated, Libya was unquestionably Africa’s most prosperous nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy in Africa and less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands. According to a former pinoy OFW, who once worked there as a nurse, Gaddafi’s government provided free education from kindergarten through university. Health Care was free. Fuel was heavily subsidized (as low as $0.14 per liter). Food and housing were subsidized. Interest-free loans from state banks as well. I guess that was something that most in the first world cannot provide for its citizens. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was Gaddafi’s intent to change the dollar to Libyan golden Dinar. As President of the African Union in 2009 Gaddafi had already called upon African oil producers to sell oil in Gold Dinars instead of US dollars. Angola and Nigeria were also at this time moving to create their own sovereign wealth funds, and so the threat to the US dollar and Western financial markets was clear. This was a defying stunt of David against Goliath (small countries against the Imperialist giants). As the snow began to settle on Ibrahim’s curly hair, turning the dark of his history into the white of a Viennese winter, I realized the ‘Nein’ we had just heard at the doorstep was merely a local echo of a much louder, global refusal. We are told that the ‘First World’ is the keeper of order and the bringer of light, yet here is a son of the most prosperous nation in Africa—a land that once offered its people the warmth of free clinics and the dignity of interest-free homes—now reduced to shivering on a bridge in the heart of Europe.
Ibrahim’s presence in the shadows of Vienna is the receipt for a debt the West refuses to acknowledge. They killed the man who dared to dream in gold so that the world would remain shackled to the paper of the dollar, and in doing so, they turned a provider into a wanderer. Floki whined again and pulled at his leash, desperate for the comfort of our heated apartment, but I stood still for a moment, weighed down by the heavy, silent truth: Ibrahim didn’t lose his way in the streets of Vienna; his way was stolen from him in the sands of the Libyan desert. As I watched him walk toward the bridge, a solitary David in a world owned by Goliaths, I realized that until we restore the right of every Ibrahim to be a master of his own soil, we are all merely innkeepers, bolting the door against the very justice we claim to serve. We are also lost—lost in our faith whose source ran dry—and may we also find our way back to our humanity. We are our brother’s keeper! How I wished I asked him what his profession was before though I know it will only sound hollow, as hollow as our belief in a just God!–
Those who would give light must endure burning.
-Viktor Frankl